New York magazine has an amazing feature story about Waiting for “Superman” called Schools: The Disaster Movie by John Helleman, which everyone should read either before or after seeing the documentary!

The article explores the issues raised by the film and the changes that have occurred in the educational system provoked by reformists such as Geoffrey Canada and Michelle Rhee and promoted by the Obama administration through its Race to the Top initiative.  Maybe there is hope that improvement is coming to our public schools!  Jonathan Alter, Newsweek columnist, said to Dwight and me at the documentary screening that he has seen more educational reform in the past 12 months than in last 20 years.

Dwight and I went to a screening for the documentary Waiting for “Superman” last night at the Paramount Screening Room in Times Square.  The alternatively inspiring and heartbreaking film focuses on five children who are marooned in failing public schools and uses their plight to illustrate the decrepit state of American public education.

The documentary was made by Davis Guggenheim, the Oscar-winning filmmaker (An Inconvenient Truth).  He has partnered with DonorsChoose.org to give viewers an opportunity to do something about the sad state of our public school system.  DonorsChoose.org is a remarkable online charity, founded by Charles Best, that connects donors to classrooms in need.  Our daughter Clare worked as an intern at DonorsChoose.org last summer.

I cannot urge you strongly enough:  Go see the documentary and get involved in the movement to change our public education system, which is not preparing our kids for bright futures in today’s global economy!

Charles Best, founder of DonorsChoose.org, and Jonathan Alter, Newsweek columnist and DonorsChoose board member, at the screening.  I apologize for the lousy picture!

My photo, below, is on the cover of this year’s New Jersey SEEDS annual report.

Check out this youtube link to see the NJ SEEDS video project that I worked on for many months!  The video is targeted at prospective SEEDS students and their parents, and its goal is to help them see how SEEDS can change the trajectory of a young person’s life.

My story, Public Preschool in Englewood Uses Italian Approach, is in the New Jersey section of Sunday’s New York Times!

Here are some of the photos I took as I reported the story (but the NYT uses its own photographer):

Last week, Dwight and I attended a talk given by Jack Shonkoff, founding director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard, www.developingchild.harvard.edu.  The center, which is only two years old, combines Harvard’s multidisciplinary expertise to study child development, then uses the knowledge gained about the developing brain and human genome to impact policy decisions on behalf of children and families.

Shonkoff spoke about three numbers:  700, 18 and 3 to 1.

Seven hundred is the number of synapses built per second in the brain in the first few years of life.  This process can be thwarted if a child is exposed to toxic levels of stress — abuse or neglect, for example.

At eighteen months vocabulary differences start to show up between the children of college-educated parents and children whose parents did not attend college.

By the time children are three years old, the vocabulary of children with college-educated parents is three times larger than the the vocabulary of children whose parents did not attend college.

I was astonished by the implications of this research.

Preschool programs for three year olds already confront huge differences in the language skills that children possess.

How do we help families and children overcome this huge 3 to 1 achievement gap that already exists at age 3?

For the past three years, I’ve written stories for Manhattan Media’s annual blackboard awards.  I have a terrific insider’s view of the amazing diversity of educational opportunities in New York City.  I visit the schools and interview administrators, teachers, parents and students.

This year, I wrote about four schools:

The Hewitt School – a private K-12 girls school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, just off Fifth Avenue.

http://westsidespirit.com/?p=410

St. Joseph’s School - Yorkville — a Catholic K-8 school, also located on the Upper East Side.

http://westsidespirit.com/?p=408

United Nations International School, Queens — a private K-8 school that is part of the United Nations International School (K-12) located in Manhattan.

http://westsidespirit.com/?p=404

Hannah Senesh Community Day School — an inclusive  Jewish private K-8 school in Brooklyn.

http://westsidespirit.com/?p=398